As a former food addict and serial dieter, I lived my life ruled by food, diets and calories. I feared food, eating out, social events, getting fatter and never being free of this trap.

No matter how much I starved myself, counted calories or exercised the weight I battled to lose and more kept coming back to me like a boomerang. I was full of self loathing!

I was doomed to be fat forever! Or so I thought…….

Fast forward 20 years or so and I could not feel more free and relaxed around food and drink. No longer do I endure the war in my head over what I should and shouldn’t eat. When you know better, you do better right?

So how did I set about changing things?

Firstly I had to work on my identity and my surroundings. I saw and thought of myself and lazy and fat. I had tried hating myself and fighting with my body to get thin. But the more I fought, the more tired I got and further I got from reaching my goal. I had to remove the foods that I struggled so hard to not eat (beige processed foods) and replace them with foods that would both nourish me and keep me satisfied. I consumed diet and cookery books learning basic nutrition and cooking skills.

I started seeing myself with new eyes believing that I deserved to be happy now and not later. Once I started to think and feel differently about myself, made small and regular baby steps things slowly started getting a little bit easier.

Instead of trying to punish myself, I wanted to nourish my body and learn about nutrition and as I started to feel healthier the momentum picked up. I was on my journey and I was loving it!

I am a simple girl and like to keep things simple. I discovered that beige, dead processed foods were central to my food addiction. When I cut them out….. I was free and suddenly I was in the driving seat of my body fat!

I became the controller of my body fat (Enter The Fat Controller!). Finally I was:

Never fighting hunger

Full of sustained energy

No longer fighting cravings

No longer thinking about food all day

Feeling vibrant and lean

Enjoying my eating and in love with learning along my journey

Inspiring my friends and family to make positive changes

In control

Proud and confident in myself

Loving my new emerging body and outward glow.

After 10 years of successfully teaching these methods to clients, friends and family I created #BanishtheBeige and the ‘No Beige Diet’ to help others find an easy way to sustainable, enjoyable and healthy fat loss. Over the last few years I have seen some incredible results with clients who simply swapped out the beige!

So what is the No Beige Diet?

As a nation, we have become #beigewashed! It has become the norm to consume vast amounts of beige foods all day long.

Beige and refined starchy carbs are the main driver of Insulin, an important growth hormone which is essential for human health but when it is stimulated too often and in large amounts it can create havoc within our finely tuned metabolism. In excess it will encourage fat storage. Other lifestyle factors will exacerbate this process such as excess stress (poor sleep, poor diet, illness, lack of exercise) so it’s important to address these too.

Diet is the one of the biggest rocks to tackle first. Why you might ask? Because we interact with food on such a large scale every single day. Just by balancing our blood sugar levels with better food choices, you will start to enjoy more energy and so will be more motivated to move more and handle stress better.

Here are some of the main culprits in the standard beige diet. These foods are extremely easy to overeat due to the way they stimulate appetite and food addiction and are the least filling of all foods to eat:

Bread and all wheat based products

Sugar in all it’s forms

Cakes, pastries and biscuits

Cereals (yes even the so called health ones)

Granola

Pasta

Processed ready meals such as pizza, pies, chips etc

Ice cream and desserts

Sweets and chocolate (unless it’s dark chocolate of around 85% or above)

Sweet, diet, fizzy and flavoured drinks

Juices and commercial fruit based smoothies

Basically almost all foods that come in some form of packaging and do no resemble any type of real food. If it has more than one ingredient, it’s highly likely it fits the ‘beige’ category.

You might be thinking that’s all your favourite foods gone?

Well panic not because in a very short space of time you will learn there are so many alternatives to these meals that will be MORE satisfying and filling. Once you start to taste #REALFOOD you taste buds will come back to life and will naturally start to demand fresh tasting foods. Here are just some examples of foods you can enjoy and will keep you appetite naturally satisfied:

Eggs

Animal based proteins and fats such as meat, offal, black pudding, fish

Full fat cheeses, cream and yoghurts

Natural nuts

Dark chocolate

All fibrous plant vegetables (largely green with some exceptions such as cabbage, cauliflower and celeriac) and salads

It might seem hard to get your head around if you have spent most of your life avoiding fat and counting calories. But I can assure you that your body is happy to processes natural food and will respond with a balanced metabolism and efficient hunger, energy and appetite management.

Still unsure? Then join our community and I will guide you. (click here). This is ideal for anyone who gets overwhelmed with too much information or simply has had enough of the battle with the bulge. My mission is to help people to have fun and create their very own diet that is easy and enjoyable to follow!

There are so many wonderful real food recipes available on the net or in the ever growing #BanishtheBeige support community (click here).

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Jill Gardner

Every diet I tried made me more miserable, more depressed and eventually fatter.

Every diet was simply focussed on trying to punish myself thin by depriving myself of nourishment and burning myself out on the cardio machines.

That was until I discovered a different way. Instead of hating myself and looking at food and exercise as calories I started to look at food as information and my body as an amazing machine that needed love, care and the right fuel.

And so begun my amazing journey to becoming a fat controller, banishing the beige and creating a fat controlling method that can help you too.